The silver key went in too deep.
Arga didn't feel the pain right away. What he felt first was cold—a chill spreading from his chest to his shoulders, then down both arms. Elara was still holding the key. Her face was blank, as if she weren't the one moving her own body.
“Why?” Arga's voice was barely audible.
Elara blinked. For a moment, something familiar returned to her eyes.
“Because you can't wake up,” she said.
Then she pulled out the key.
Arga collapsed.
The archive room spun. The photographs on the walls came loose one by one and fell around him. In every picture, he saw himself at a different age: a baby inside a glass box, a little boy with a shaved head, a young man sleeping alone in a cramped room.
Elara was always there in every photograph.
Sometimes as a little girl behind the glass. Sometimes as a shadow in the doorway. Sometimes standing beside his bed, crying.
“Look at me,” Elara said.
Arga tried to lift his head. Blood warmed his shirt, but the wound didn't look like an ordinary wound. There was no torn flesh. Only white light spilling from his chest, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
“This isn't blood,” Elara whispered.
“Then why does it hurt?”
“Because dreams always use the thing you find easiest to believe.”
She knelt beside Arga. Her hands were trembling now. The blank expression that had covered her emotions began to crack, just like the false face of the faceless man.
A knock came from behind the wall.
Three times.
Arga squeezed his eyes shut.
The knocking changed into the sound of his boardinghouse door. The hum of an old fan. The sound of vehicles on the narrow street outside the house. The real world was calling him in a voice so ordinary.
“Wake up,” Elara said.
Arga opened his eyes.
Behind Elara stood two overlapping rooms. On the left was the archive, its walls covered in photographs and lined with metal shelves. On the right was Arga's room, with its thin mattress, cup of instant noodles, and unwashed clothes.
Between them was a narrow gap filled with light.
“If you go out through there,” Elara said, “you'll wake up.”
“And you?”
“I'll stay here.”
“You're the one who stabbed me.”
“I know.”
“So you want me to just leave?”
Elara stared at the silver key in her hand. Its surface reflected a face unlike the one her body wore. The reflection showed a little girl standing in a hospital corridor.
“I've killed you over and over,” she said.
Arga held his breath.
“In the dream?”
“In every possible outcome.”
The photographs on the walls began to change. The picture of Arga and Elara in the greenhouse was replaced by other scenes. In one photograph, Arga was strangling Elara beside a pool. In another, Elara was shooting Arga inside a car. In the last, they stood side by side in front of a mansion, smiling like newlyweds.
Beneath the photograph was a handwritten message:
The easiest life is one that doesn't remember.
“Who wrote that?” Arga asked.
Elara didn't answer.
His mother's voice came from the archive corridor.
“He wrote it himself.”
Arga's mother appeared between the metal shelves. She still held the small scissors, but now one of the blades was broken.
“Arga, you always thought the dreams chose you,” she said. “But you were the one who asked for them.”
Arga tried to stand. His body felt heavy, as if it were filled with sand.
“I was just a kid.”
“Children can beg, too.”
Elara stood and faced the woman. “Stop blaming him.”
“Isn't that what you're doing, too?”
Elara's hands curled into fists.
Arga's mother walked closer. With every step she took, the photographs on the walls grew older. Their colors faded. The faces disappeared.
“Damar found a way to sever the anchor,” she said. “He tried to get you both out of this project. But when he failed, he planted that key inside Arga's memories.”
Arga stared at the key in Elara's hand.
“So Damar didn't give me the key to open a door.”
“No,” Elara said.
She lowered her head.
“He gave you the key to lock yourself away.”
Arga let out a short laugh. The sound seemed foreign in the room full of photographs.
“Great. Everyone makes decisions for me, then calls it protection.”
Elara looked at him. “I know.”
“No. You don't.”
“I know because I did the same thing.”
Silence fell between them.
Elara lifted her face. Her eyes were wet, but she wouldn't let the tears fall.
“I was the one who asked them to make you the anchor,” she said. “Not your mother. Not Damar. Me.”
Arga felt the light in his chest pulse harder.
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid then.”
“And now?”
“Now I'm more afraid.”
Arga's mother smiled faintly. “You finally said it.”
Elara whipped her head toward her. “Shut up.”
“Do you think he'll forgive you?”
“No.”
“Then why bring him here?”
Elara looked at Arga.
“Because if I have to die, I want the person who hates me to be the last person I see.”
The words hurt more than the key piercing Arga's chest.
He looked at the gap of light leading to his room. It was so close. He could smell the damp mattress and the cheap coffee he usually drank. He could go back to being his old self—a young man with no job, no money, and no reason to get up except hunger.
But on the other side, Elara stood with her hands stained by the light pouring from her body.
The girl who had lied to him. The girl who had chosen him. The girl who might love him only because he was her way out.
“If I wake up,” Arga said, “what happens to you?”
“I'll disappear.”
“And if I stay here?”
“You'll become like me.”
“What does that mean?”
Elara smiled without happiness.
“You'll forget what it feels like to have a life that belongs only to you.”
Outside the archive, the faceless man began to draw near. There were no footsteps. Only the sound of many people whispering in the same voice.
You want to be rich. You want to be loved. You want to be somebody.
Arga looked at Elara.
“I used to want all those things.”
“I know.”
“But now I only want one thing.”
Elara waited.
Arga reached for her hand. Their fingers met over the silver key.
“I want you to tell me the truth without asking me to save you.”
Elara closed her eyes.
“All right.”
“No. Look at me.”
Elara opened her eyes.
“I don't know if I love you,” she said. “I only know that from the first time I saw you in the hospital, I could never imagine a world without your face in it. I used you. I lied to you. I made you come to me. But when you actually came, I hoped you'd hate me enough to leave.”
“And if I don't leave?”
“Then I failed to save you.”
Arga brushed a hand over the light in his chest. The pain was beginning to fade, but his body was becoming more transparent.
Behind Elara, the faceless man entered the room.
This time, he wore no one's face.
He had Arga's face.
“Your choice is simple,” he said. “Wake up and live in poverty, or stay here and have everything.”
The metal shelves sprang open all at once. Inside were money, jewelry, house deeds, and photographs of the life Arga had only ever dared to dream about.
Elara turned her face away.
“Don't look,” she said.
Arga stepped closer to one of the shelves instead. He took a stack of cash. The bills felt real. Heavy. Convincing.
Then he tore them in half.
The faceless man stopped.
“Money was never the problem,” Arga said. “The problem was that I always believed money could turn me into someone else.”
He turned to Elara.
“I don't know if I can forgive you.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“I also don't know whether what I feel for you is really love.”
“I know.”
“But I do know one thing.”
Arga gripped the silver key together with Elara.
“I won't let them decide what I should do with you.”
For the first time, the faceless man stepped back.
Arga's mother raised her broken scissors.
“Then choose of your own free will.”
She snipped the air.
The gap leading to Arga's room widened. White light swallowed the archive floor. The photographs burned without fire. The faceless man screamed as the face of Arga he wore began to peel away.
Elara pulled Arga toward the gap.
“Hold on to me.”
“Don't let go of me.”
“I won't.”
They jumped together.
Arga woke with his breath cut short.
The ceiling of the boardinghouse room greeted him in shades of gray. Rain battered the window. His chest felt hot, but there was no wound. Beside him, Elara lay on the floor, still wearing the same clothes she had worn when they entered the dream.
Arga immediately sat up.
“Elara.”
The girl didn't move.
He gently tapped her cheek. Elara opened her eyes.
They stared at each other in silence.
Then Elara began to cry.
Not loudly. Just tears streaming down her face like something that had finally found a way out.
Arga pressed a hand to his chest. Something felt hard beneath his skin.
He pulled down his collar.
A thin key-shaped line was etched into the center of his chest.
Elara saw it, and her face went pale.
“Arga,” she said, “we haven't really woken up.”
A knock came from the bathroom.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then Damar's voice spoke from behind the door:
“If you're awake, who's sleeping in that bed?”